Fundraising From Year To Year

how to build your community of donors each year

Fundraising once a year is a wonderful way to stay involved with empowering the people of Sudan while trying out different ways to raise funds for them.

You can mix it up from year to year! For example, you can fundraise to run in our annual Eden’s Run 5k one year and the next year you might fundraise for your birthday. No matter which awesome way you choose to fundraise, we’ve collected a few tips to make your fundraising from year to year as effective as possible.

1. Keeping Track Of Your Donors Each Year

The secret to fundraising annually is to be organized and stay organized. You should have a list with these details:

We recommend waiting at least 6 month before asking a donor for another donation, but ideally you will wait 10-12 months if you are fundraising annually.

2. Communicating With Your Donors Throughout The Year

There’s nothing worse than only hearing from someone once a year...and all they do is ask for money. So don’t do that to your donors! Make sure to thank them for their previous donation before ever asking for another one.

Also, if they’ve donated that means that they have invested in the cause of empowering the Sudanese to tackle the challenges ahead of them. If they opted in to receiving emails from us when they donated, they should be pretty up to date on what’s going on. But since they are invested, it would be a great idea to send them a recent update or news roundup from our blog. Text them the link and say, “Hey, just wanted to keep you in the loop about how your money is being used and what’s going on in Sudan! Thank you for helping me reach my fundraising goal earlier this year!”

3. Go For A Bigger Donation

If you have treated your donors right (thanked them, kept them up to date with how their money is being used, and talked to them outside of just asking for money) they should be feeling safe and confident about their involvement with Operation Broken Silence through you. It is totally ok to ask for a bigger donation this time around! Tell them about the impact their gift made last year, and show your enthusiasm for what another gift could do.

Need Additional Help?

We've only seen it happen a few times, but sometimes a fundraiser does everything right and still makes no progress. If almost no one is giving to your campaign and you have tried everything on our Fundraising Support list, contact us for additional help.